Super FamiComplete #114: Garry Kitchen's Super Battletank: War in the Gulf

 

Title: Garry Kitchen's Super Battletank: War in the Gulf

Release Date: June 1992

Developer: Imagineering Inc

Publisher: Absolute Entertainment

Our first US developed game for June is a really weird game in that it is a game set during a war that was only a year in the past at the time this game was made (and arguably was being developed at the time the conflict was taking place. This really isn't something that is done anymore, and while there have been plenty of games since that have fetishized or glorified the modern soldier or war (looking at you Soldier of Fortune, which was the fictitious accounts of a real life mercenary who contributed to the magazine of the same name), this really comes off as unique. 

Background

Let's start with the name in the title: Garry Kitchen. Mr. Kitchen was a well known American programmer and developer, best known for making the  Atari 2600 port of Donkey Kong, a complete remake of the arcade game that was actually pretty decent and the first home console port of the incredibly popular arcade game. He was actually the founder of Absolute Entertainment (and subsequently the developer, Imagineering, who were the in-house developers), the publisher for this game, though they really didn't accomplish too much as a developer or publisher, though they certainly earned some notoriety by developing Bart vs the Space Mutants. He really hasn't done much as far as making video games as of late, but he did help co-found the National Video Game Museum and still sits on their board. 

Now for a bit of a history lesson. The Persian Gulf War or the Gulf War was a military response by the American military and 34 allied nations to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Iraq, ostensibly, invaded Kuwait due to perceived "economic" threats to their country, claiming that the overproduction of oil by Kuwait was hurting the Iraqi economy by devaluing their oil. The United States and its allies entered Kuwait with the goal to repel the Iraqis, and this led to a two year conflict which ended when the forces invaded Iraq and the Iraqis sued for peace. The Gulf War was one of the first widely televised wars, with tv stations streaming from cameras attached to bombers, and gained a lot of publicity to issues that surround wars such as PTSD and war related trauma. Apparently, though, in inspiration to this game, this war hosted the third largest American tank battle ever. In this game, you play in an M-1 Abrams Tank, the main tank used by the American coalition in the Gulf conflict. 

Gameplay

The gameplay is pretty simple! You get a briefing from a general, and then are plopped into the middle of a map in your M-1 Abrams tank. You control your tank on a Mode 7 plane from a first person perspective while driving around and destroying your enemies with the tank cannon. Much of the gameplay is maneuvering to get an advantageous position on the enemies while avoiding getting cornered and destroyed by the rival tanks, making this feel like a form of ground-based dogfighting. 

The game does challenge realism quite a bit. Much like a hunting shooting gallery video game where you are killing 100s of animals in one round, this game is the most fast-paced tank combat imaginable. You zip around the battlefield like an F-Zero car, and your cannon shoots as fast as you can hit the button. 

That's really it! The game is not too long and it is not exceptionally challenging (at least until you get to the later missions where you are immediately surrounded by enemy troops). Missions play out in a matter of minutes, and the game does offer some varieties of enemies in the later missions when they add helicopters, SCUD launchers, and humvees/jeeps. 

Music

The music is incredibly limited, but here it is anyway...

Ads

This actually has a commercial, which really seems like is is some "YVAN EHT NIOJ" style marketing; like they want to sell action figures of the Abrams as well as get kids to enlist. Really weird. 

Final Verdict

This is another game where the fact that it exists, and it is steeped in a weird corner of history, is really the most interesting thing about it. Otherwise its is a really mediocre tank-battler. Overall, I would skip this one.